It is well known that many individuals experience weakness or pain in their hands, especially those suffering from arthritis. Those individuals find it challenging to grasp and twist standard twist and turn caps due to their impairments, and often require assistance in accessing the contents of a bottle, e.g., prescription medicines. This is an especially troubling problem because arthritics consume over 30% of prescription products yearly.
Caps have been proposed in the past which include upstanding tabs that are intended to engage furniture or walls in order to assist in turning the caps to open the container. As an example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,512 of Barriac discloses various upstanding tabs useful in twisting the cap to allow access to the contents of the bottle. However, it turns out that the height of Barriac's tabs is too low to effectively engage a corner (e.g., the edge of a table, a corner of a door frame or a shelf of a bookcase) in order for an impaired user to comfortably twist the cap. This height is about the thickness of a pencil or ¼ inch. Also, some of the Barriac tabs have shallow “v”-shapes, which make them even less effective in grasping a corner surface. In particular, the “v”-shape slips too easily from the corner instead of grabbing the corner surface. The same is true of the Barriac tabs oriented as spokes on a wheel. The spokes only offer two closely spaced grabbing tabs at any one time, and that does not provide sufficient stability to grab and torque off a cap. Also, the way all the spoked tabs are configured on the same surface at the same time, would interfere with grabbing. Barriac's tabs on the top surface are all oriented to the midline, limiting the torque that can be generated.
The present inventor's own U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,257 also discloses shallow vertical tabs intended to engage the forearm of the user. While these tabs are not oriented toward the midline of the cap and have generally rectangular shape, they tend to dig into the forearm of the user while the user is trying to twist off the cap. This cause discomfort and even pain. Further, because the flesh of the forearm tends to give under pressure, a reduced amount of torque is applied to the cap. Also, the present inventor's own U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,502 discloses a variety of upstanding tabs designed to engage the forearm, fingers, palm or wrist of the user. Some of these tabs may be pivoted down so as to be flush with the top surface of the cap. As with U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,257, the tabs of this design are uncomfortable to use and provide reduced torque.
The present inventor also has U.S. Design Pat. Nos. D613,161 and D620,356, which disclose upstanding tabs of significant height, i.e., above ¼ inch. However, each has a rounded profile. When the tabs engage a corner, the maximum torque is generated at the ends of the tabs. However, with these rounded designs the ends of the tabs have reduced heights. Thus, they are not very effective in transmitting torque to the cap to twist it off the bottle. In particular, those rounded ends do not provide extensive solid contact surfaces when engaging the corner surface of a structure while torqueing the cap loose.
From the above, it can therefore be seen that there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations of the prior art and to provide tabs on a cap that make it easy to twist because it is not uncomfortable to use and transmits significant torque to the cap.